How to Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies

Even if you're a reluctant (or flat-out nervous) baker, you can handle learning how to bake chocolate chips cookies. First, some cookie trivia to loosen you up: The chocolate chip cookie was invented in the 1930s by Ruth Graves Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, MA. She stirred some chopped chocolate into her usual "Butter Drop Do" cookies, thinking it would melt and spread, but alas, the softened chocolate bits stayed intact, and a star was born.
Making the dough for chocolate chip cookie is a fairly easy task, but there are a couple things to keep in mind. For easier and more uniform blending, it is important the butter and shortening are at room temperature. Upon adding the flour, mix until you no longer see streaks of white--don't over-mix or the cookies will be tough.
When placing dollops of dough on a cookie sheet, make sure they're at least 2 inches apart (for teaspoon portions of dough) or 4 inches apart (for 1/4-cup portions). If they are too close together, the cookies will melt into each other and won't have a perfect round shape. Also, have patience when baking: The chocolate chip cookies will cook most evenly on the middle rack of the oven, so it's worthwhile to wait for each batch to finish instead of crowding in multiple batches at once.

-Hi, everyone. I'm Judith. Well today, we'll be making everyone's
favorite, Chocolate Chip Cookies. So, the ingredients you'll need is
1/2 cup of shortening; 1/2 cup of butter; 1 cup
of packed brown sugar; 1/2 cup of granulated sugar; 1/2
teaspoon of baking soda; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon of vanilla;
2-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour; 1 (12 ounce) package or
2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate pieces; and, 1-1/2 cups of
chopped walnut, pecans or hazelnuts are optional too if you
want a little more crunch in your cookie. All right,
so it's actually a pretty easy recipe to do, the
chocolate chip cookies. And, this is how we're going to
do it. So, into our large mixing bowl, we're going
to add in our butter and our shortening. Shortening, of
course, is fat which is solid at room temperature. All
right, now we're just going to whisk this up for
about 30 seconds. Lovely, nice, soft and smooth there. So,
into that, we're going to add in our brown sugar,
our granulated sugar and our baking powder. And, we're going
to beat that up. And, if you need to take
anything from the sides, go ahead and scrape it in.
Okay, very good. Now, it's time to add in our
eggs and vanilla. So, in they go. Let's add vanilla
is just going to do-- give a lovely flavor to
our cookies and we're going to beat it-- beat again.
All right, so now it's time for the flour. And,
we're going to beat as much flour as we can
using our mixer. So, we'll just go in batches first
of all. Okay, we are done. That is now a
nice consistency for our cookies. So, we'll set that aside.
Stir that all in. So, last but not the least,
of course, we're going to add in our chocolate pieces.
And, if you have nuts here that you want to
add in, you can put that in too. So, in
they go. Oh, look at that. It's just beautiful. Stir
those in. All right, so we've folded in all those
chocolate chips into our mixture. Looking good. Now, let's get
our cookie sheet. We get an ungreased cookie sheet there
and we're just going to get 1 full teaspoon of
this mixture and we'll put it down on to the
sheet like that. And, keep about 1-inch apart from each
of the cookie-- the cookies. You're just going to drop
them. So, we'll do the same with our remaining mixture.
So, these are going to go now into the oven
at 375-degrees for about 8-10 minutes or until the sides
are lightly browned. So, our chocolate chip cookies are out
of the oven. They were in there for about 10
minutes. Lovely golden brown. We let them rest for a
little while and now they are ready to serve up.
Serve that with some of your favorite vanilla ice cream
or a nice glass of cold milk. And, that is
the perfect afternoon snack. There you go. That is how
you make Chocolate Chip Cookies.

What You'll Need

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 12 ounce package (2 cups) semisweet chocolate pieces

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts (optional)

Step By Step

1

In a large mixing bowl beat shortening and butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, and baking soda. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Using a wooden spoon, stir in any remaining flour. Stir in chocolate pieces and, if desired, nuts.